Chapter Six'Mrs Bembridge,' my handsome lieutenant said, 'may I speak to you, please?'
Mother looked at him with some suspicion, probably wondering if he was going to say that he could not pay his account, or ask for extra fresh linen or some such. 'You are speaking now,' she told him, in rather more severe a tone than she normally used with her guests.
'It is rather a delicate matter,' he said, looking to me for support, or perhaps checking that I had not decided to kiss a farmer next, or one of the hairy free traders.
Mother also glanced over to me, her eyes narrowed. I could nearly hear her thoughts as she wondered what we had been up to and if she would soon have to endure unwanted grandchildren infesting her neat and clean inn. 'Speak,' she said in a voice that would have scared Bo
